


Harder Than You Know

by maliajo



Series: The Song Series [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Bucky Barnes Feels, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, angsty Steve Rogers, angsty captain america
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9144748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maliajo/pseuds/maliajo
Summary: Are we just lost in time?I wonder if your love's the same'Cause I'm not over you.Baby, don't talk to meI'm trying to let goNot loving you is harder than you know – “Harder Than You Know” by Escape the Fate





	

Steve Rogers always ran without music.  Natasha had offered to teach him how to load music onto his iPhone, but he’d politely declined, in part because he barely knew how to work the damn thing to begin with, and also because he had enough in his head without the barrage of beats and lyrics that were, quite frankly, irritating at best.  Modern music had nothing on the big bands of his youth.  Every morning, Steve put on a pair of beaten up Nike running shoes, and ran, just him and his thoughts.  He ran for a lot of reasons, not just to stay fit, but also to try, desperately, to clear his mind.  It rarely worked out that way, though. 

Today, he laced up, quickly stretched his quads, and exited through the front door of Stark Tower.  _There was something to be said for being on ice for 70 years_ , Steve thought bitterly as he jogged away from the building.  While frozen in the ice, he hadn't had to deal with the omnipresent nagging thoughts of Bucky.  He shook his head and picked up the pace, heading for the Manhattan Bridge, and what was on the other side.  _Home._  Brooklyn sure didn’t look like the Brooklyn that Steve remembered as a child, but running its streets occasionally soothed the raging thoughts flying through his head.  The thoughts of Bucky remained, though, no matter how hard he ran; constant and inescapable.  Steve had tried in the past to zone out and just run, but that was a poor life choice, having resulted in close encounters with three city buses, a semi or two, and more than a few taxis.  He had to stay alert, but alert was a relative term.  

_Bucky._

When he was in the ice, he hadn't had to wrestle with the guilt and the gripping depression from the loss of his best friend, the only one who'd ever been in his corner ever since he was just Steve Rogers in Brooklyn.  He hadn't had to find ways to manage the memories that were rudely thrust back into his brain every time he shut his eyes: playing catch in the street, the first time he saw Bucky as _Bucky_ , the love of his life and not just his best friend…the first time he was able to save Bucky, instead of the other way around, at Azzano.  He hadn't had to picture, daily, the time he failed in that duty.  He’d never remove from his head the memory of watching his best friend fall to his death, and being powerless to stop it.  

 _God, Buck, I'm sorry._  

Steve kept running.

He'd finally accepted it, that Bucky was dead and he was still alive, that his bed would always be empty, and that his heart would never be whole again.  It hadn't made things any easier.  Even accepting that Bucky wasn't coming back didn't take away the guilt, and it definitely did not take away the fact that he'd never love someone the way he loved Bucky.  Peggy had been sweet, sure, but even Peggy had understood that while Steve did love her, he was _in love_ with Bucky.  But both of them were gone; Bucky lost to him before he went in the ice, and Peggy lost to him through the natural human aging process and the toll it often took on the mind.     

Then Bucky came back.

Believing that it was Bucky who had come back into his life was like believing Santa Claus was real, though, and Steve had never been one for fairy tales and blatant lies.  While the Winter Soldier’s shell may have looked like Bucky, with the addition of that impressive metal arm, whatever was inside the shell was not the James Buchanen Barnes that Steve had grown up with. 

Despite all of that, it had been hard not to run to him.  It took everything Steve had in him that day to not take Bucky in his arms, and kiss him senseless, but reality set in remarkably quickly when the Winter Soldier’s eyes showed no signs of recognition.  Bucky didn’t even know his own identity, not really.  He’d try to kill Steve, and despite the busted lip and black eye, Steve still clung to the hope that Bucky, his Bucky, was locked away in some hidden recess of the Winter Soldier’s tormented mind.

_“I’m not gonna fight you.”_

Steve’s chest felt tight, and not only from the impressive pace he’d maintained for the last five miles.  “Five down, a million more to go,” he muttered to no one but himself and, though he slowed to a light jog, he kept running.  He was coming up on the streets of his childhood, but today, Steve had to turn around.  He couldn’t bring himself to run past so many familiar places.

There was no reason, in his current state of mind, that he needed to run past the alley in which Bucky had first said, “I think I love you, Stevie,” and then kissed him full on the lips.  He’d seen stars that day.  They both had, and giggled about it later, while huddled under a blanket in a foxhole during a particularly brutal cold snap in the War, hiding from both the enemy and the prying eyes of their comrades.  Steve already wanted to stop and crawl under a rock remembering both of those days, and all the days in between – he didn’t need to physically see the alley today in all its filthy glory. 

He didn’t need to see the diner-turned-coffeehouse where they’d gone for dinner so many times, always careful not to let it slip what they really were to each other. 

He definitely didn’t need to see the site of the old tenement in which he and Bucky had first discovered each other. 

He didn’t need to see any of it, because his overactive neurons already wouldn’t let him forget.  Something about the serum had drastically improved Steve’s memory, along with the rapid-fire of his thoughts, and he was rarely sure if either of those was a good thing.

_Bucky, come on.  You know me.  You know who I am._

_I don’t._

_I know you do!  It’s me.  Christ, it’s me, it’s Stevie.  You have to remember._

_Get the hell away from me.  I don’t fucking know you._

It felt like knives were shredding Steve’s lungs and he doubled over, suddenly winded, with angry tears stinging his eyes.  It was a daydream, nothing more, but one that replayed in his mind just often enough to keep the wounds from his loss open and fresh. 

He stayed bent at the waist for a few moments, breathing deeply, garnering a handful of curious glances from passerby, all the while struggling to reign in his emotions before continuing back to his home. 

“Home,” Steve scoffed.

What the hell did home mean anymore?  Home was still Brooklyn.  Steve shook his head, because that was a lie.  Home wasn’t Brooklyn, and home certainly wasn’t Tony Stark’s ultra-modern skyscraper.  Home had always been wherever Bucky was.  Home had changed so many times with Bucky…first the cramped tenement, then barracks at basic training, and the foxhole they’d shared.  Steve would’ve followed him anywhere, and did, until Bucky had fallen that day so many years ago.  He wished, more often than not, that he’d fallen from the train, too.

For today and every day since Steve was woken up, though, home didn’t mean Bucky.  Home meant returning to Stark Tower.  It meant walking in the door with a cool façade, making polite chit-chat with Natasha, Bruce, or whomever happened to be in the common area at the time, and then going to his quarters.

It meant locking his door, putting on a record, maybe The Andrews Sisters or Glenn Miller, and turning the music up as high as he could stand it to try to drown out the thoughts he couldn’t talk about with anyone.

It meant crying, curled up in a ball on the bed, wrapped in every blanket he had, hugging the pillow and wishing, praying that someday, Bucky would come back to him.

Steve stood for a minute, frozen in place on the sidewalk, unsure of what to do next.  He didn’t _want_ to go to Stark Tower, but he didn’t want to go anywhere else either.  Finally, he settled on the only sure option, and started running back towards Manhattan. 

Maybe tonight would be different.  Maybe he wouldn’t cry tonight.  Maybe he’d be the version of himself the rest of the world saw when he was Captain America: strong and oh so sure of himself.   _Ha, not likely_.  But maybe…maybe. 

The only thing Steve knew for certain was that no matter what happened when he got back to Stark Tower, or how fast he ran, he’d never stop dreaming of Bucky, of happier times, and of the future.  Until the day came to pass when Bucky finally woke up himself from his nightmare with HYDRA, Steve would maintain the status quo of simply going through the motions each day until he was able to lace up his shoes again and hit the pavement.

Running was easy – battling with his own mind was the hard part, but he’d manage.  Somehow, he always did.

 

_Are we just lost in time?_

_I wonder if your love's the same_

_'Cause I'm not over you._

_Baby, don't talk to me_

_I'm trying to let go_

_Not loving you is harder than you know – “Harder Than You Know” by Escape the Fate_

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by "Harder Than You Know" by Escape the Fate, the audio of which can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMMuGuli6fg
> 
> This is my first fic in at least 10 years, and it's un-beta'ed...apologies.


End file.
